Last month Lasa launched our report Digital: what every charity leader should know. The crowdsourced report featured insights from Martha Lane Fox, Beth Kanter, UNICEF UK and JustGiving amongst others into how charity leaders can engage with digital to build a more sustainable sector.

Alongside this, we wanted to gauge wider views across the sector into charities' use of digital and how else they think it could help them. So today we're launching the results of our Charity Digital Survey at our sold out Charity Digital Summit, part of our Google funded programme of technology events for charities. Many of the 334 charity sector professionals who responded to the survey view digital as essential to their work, but fear they could miss out on opportunities for fundraising and income generation due to a lack of digital skills.

Main findings:

Two thirds of respondents (66%) said that digital is "essential" to their charities, and that they would be unable to "function without it." 30% rated it as "fairly important" and a tiny 5% cited it as '"nice to have." Laila Takeh, head of digital engagement at UNICEF UK said, "This is a great step forward but the number should be higher. Few people live without technology in their personal lives so digital has to be essential in every sector."

Charities are heavily reliant on and have a breadth of uses for digital. 94% of charities surveyed use digital for communications (eg e-newsletters, social media and apps), with 81% using it for essential infrastructure (such as intranets, remote office access, and finance). These were closely followed by 70% for service provision, including online information and advice, and 68% for fundraising. Interestingly, 61% of charities said that they used digital for research purposes and data too.

Yet respondents felt there was further potential for their charities to engage with digital. Over two thirds (69%) said that they "were using it but could do more with it," whilst just one in five (21%) believed that their organisations were "fully engaged with it as an organisation, from board members to junior staff." 10% admitted that they were "not engaging with it sufficiently."

We wanted to know what the barriers were to charities engaging as fully as possible with digital. 56% of respondents stated that there was a "need for training," with 55% saying that "digital needs to be a core competency for all staff." 50% cited a "lack of time to get to grips with it." In a sector under increasing pressure, digital skills are at a premium. The results indicate that leadership could be a greater cause of this than budget cuts, as 41% of respondents felt that there was "a lack of understanding of digital at board/director level," and a third (33%) believing that they needed "a more innovative culture" at their organisations, with only 26% citing "budget cuts" as the reason. It appears that true engagement with digital is led from the top.

Worryingly, charities described some significant risks to sustainability if the sector does not engage with digital. More than three out of four respondents (78%) believe that charities will miss out on fundraising and income generating opportunities. "Good quality digital communication has become an essential fundraising and relationship management tool and organisations who don't make that shift will be left behind," says Lucy Caldicott, director of fundraising at CLIC Sargent. "Charities have to be prepared to communicate with supporters in the ways they choose. They are our customers and can choose to go elsewhere if we don't give them what they want."

Interestingly, 77% of respondents feared that charities could lose supporters due to "not communicating with them effectively." More than seven out of ten (71%) were concerned that charities who do not engage with digital "could be left behind." 65% of respondents were also concerned that organisations may waste money by not making the most of digital tools they have invested in. More than half (56%) were worried that charities would not be able to help as many people unless they embraced digital service delivery.

In July this year JustGiving told the Lasa mobile technology summit that there were 1.8 mobiles for every person in the UK. Yet almost two thirds (63%) of charities surveyed told us that they were not using mobile for fundraising or apps and did not have a mobile friendly website. The 37% who do are therefore ahead of the curve. 37% of respondents are already using cloud technologies, whilst 35% have no plans to and 28% are not using them but plan to.

The results show us a sector that is heavily reliant on digital, and is aware of the huge potential that it offers. But it will require strong leadership, greater skills and cultural change for charities to benefit from it fully. And, as respondents told us, charities must face this issue, or risk being left behind. As one of them said, "Those who embed digital in their organisation and structure will win."